Session
A Tax on Retirement Accounts
We’ve all heard there are two inevitable things in life: death and taxes. While we can’t avoid the former, there are things we can do to minimize the latter. In this session, we’ll learn the basics of how all types of retirement accounts are taxed in retirement (at the federal and sometimes state level). We’ll also understand the importance of recognizing that our retirement system members may have retirement accounts from outside their current system (perhaps from past employment in other state systems or the private sector), or their spouses/partners may have those resources if married. How all those resources work together in retirement can mean higher or lower income taxation. In retirement, it turns out what you don’t know will hurt you.
Learn More About Mike
Integrity Financial Planning
Mike has more than 40 years of experience in the financial services industry, with his last 13 years working at Utah Retirement System as a Retirement Planning Advisor. He is a Certified Financial Planner® and a Certified Retirement Counselor®. He earned his MBA in
finance from Baylor University. Mike has taught at the College for Financial Planning, the Society of Certified Senior Advisors, and worked as an instructor and technical consult for the International Foundation for Retirement Education.
Explore Mike’s Past Sessions
2022
Fundamentals of Retirement Planning
InFRE is NPEA’s trusted partner for providing retirement-specific professional development, retirement counselor certification and plan administration certificate training courses designed specifically for public sector defined contribution and defined benefit plans.
Being aware of how to plan for retirement at different career stages provide the groundwork for understanding the broad variety of factors that affect how well an employee achieves their retirement goals. This course will focus on how to implement the principles of retirement planning to achieve retirement preparedness.You will learn about:
- Retirement planning across the lifecycle
- Helping pre-retirees understand the importance of preparing psychologically, socially, physically, geographically, as well as financially, for retirement
- Retirement mindsets and behavioral finance
- Financial and retirement goal setting
- Retirement risk management
- Elder care and elder fraud
- Key tax and estate planning strategies for retirees
Perfect for those with new to intermediate level retirement knowledge and skills, this is Course #1 of the InFRE® Certified Retirement Counselor® (CRC®) Certification study program.
Windfall Elimination Provision (WEP)
Employees who work for a Social Security-exempt agency for some or all of their careers may be impacted by the Windfall Elimination Provision (WEP). Workers and their employers need to not only understand the financial impact of the WEP on a worker but also possibly the impact on a worker’s spouse. The good news is that the WEP effect is not as severe as the rumor mill makes it out to be, and there are potential ways to reduce the financial impact.
And then there’s the Government Pension Offset (GPO). Workers need to recognize the GPO’s impact on their choice of using a voluntary retirement savings plan through their employer, such as a 401k or 457, and the impact on them if they anticipate receiving spousal or survivor benefits from Social Security.
If your agency/system pays into Social Security and your members are “off the hook,” why might you still want to know about these two topics? Employees nowadays are changing jobs and employers more frequently than in the past, so you may already have members in your system who worked in the past for a Social Security exempt agency. Or your members’ spouses might have worked for an exempt agency, and your member may look to you for education and understanding on these topics.
2025
The saying “the only constant is change” is attributed to the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus. In the retirement years, current and future retirees can and should expect things to be different. Investment markets change, tax laws change, physical and mental health change, and relationships change among many other areas. To some, all these “disruptions” can feel like unwelcome chaos. But knowing this, are there ways to thrive in retirement life in the midst of and in spite of all this chaos? Indeed, there are. You can benefit from this knowledge yourself, as a future retiree, and you can apply this knowledge as you help members of your retirement system enter retirement.
